Rick Ungar
, ContributorI write from the left on politics and policy.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Image by AFP via @daylife

It's a topic that has kept many a parent up at night.

The H5N1 flu- more frequently referred to as avian or bird flu- has long been identified as one of those great threats to public health throughout the world. Should the bug ever mutate into a form that passes as easily between humans as it does among birds and other animals, we would have a very serious problem on our hands.

The good news is, to date, we've managed to dodge a lethal pandemic as only 500 people, in approximately 12 countries, have been infected by the virus. The bad news is that of those humans contracting the bug, 60 percent of them have died from the infection.

Now, Scientist Magazine is reporting that medical researchers in the Netherlands have intentionally engineered a strain of the H5N1 virus that can pass as easily between people as any other flu virus. Clearly, if this one should ever get out of the laboratory, we are all in seriously big trouble.

We know of this discovery because the Dutch scientist who led the team to create this mutation presented the ‘accomplishment’ to a conference in Malta a few months ago.

And it gets worse - far worse.

According to National Public Radio, the researchers wish to publish their findings so that anyone with an advanced chemistry set and a little medical training can replicate the mutation – including any number of bio-terrorists who live for the opportunity to unleash such a disease that could easily kill millions throughout the world.

According to Dr. Thomas Inglesby, a bioterrorism expert and director of the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center:

It's just a bad idea for scientists to turn a lethal virus into a lethal and highly contagious virus. And it's a second bad idea for them to publish how they did it so others can copy it.

If that sounds like a dramatic statement of the obvious to you - as it does to me - consider the words of Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) who suggests that these studies are important because “the results show that those downplaying the risks of an H5N1 pandemic should think again.”